Page 84 of A Much Maligned Miss

Caroline drew in a sharp breath. “Yes,” she said, screwing up her eyes in the effort of remembrance. “There was something…the name of a company, I think, though why I assumed it was a solicitor’s firm I have no notion!” An expression of frustration crossed her face.

“No, it’s no good. I can’t bring it to mind!” She gave a vexed exclamation. “I feel like it was on the tip of my tongue just now, and then it receded completely. But it might all be a trick of my mind.”

He leaned back on the sofa. “Don’t try to force it. It may come back to you presently.”

“But even if it does, how will we know I am not muddling facts with my dream?” Caroline sighed. “The dream was so peculiar, it invested the whole scene with some… Oh, I don’t know! Some horrible significance it does not deserve.”

Gervaise paused in the act of reaching for his brandy. “How so? Explain it to me.”

“That’s just it,” she said wretchedly. “It would sound like the veriest nothing if I said it aloud! It’s be hard to convey the—the peculiar terror that flooded me when that hand reached over to whisk the envelope away. As if it belonged to some monster instead of my own mother!” She gave an embarrassed laugh. “It’s ridiculous but my heart was racing with dread. It woke me up, though I did fall back to sleep afterward, and then I saw—” She broke off, biting her lip.

“Saw what?” he asked. “Tell me. I don’t care how foolish you think it. I want to hear it.” When she did not speak, he added, “Sometimes, speaking the nightmare aloud forces it to recede once more into the shadows where it belongs.”

She looked up quickly at that. “You think it might?”

“Perhaps. If it is still affecting you.”

She gave a little shiver. “It is,” she admitted in a low voice. “I can’t get the image out of my head. Oh, it was horrible. At least, it wasn’t at the time but when I woke up the next morning, then I was so afraid…” She turned rather pale. He did not speak, merely waited patiently for her to speak.

Taking a deep breath, she began. “It was the night we danced on the terrace,” she confessed. “I had such awful sleep that night, my mouth was dry, my heart pounding in my chest. I don’t really remember what I dreamed of but when I woke up, I had this awful recollection of something I had seen that afternoon. Do you remember when you saw me that evening, I was all disheveled with leaves in my hair?”

“I remember.”

“You see, I had been in the kitchen garden after lunch picking herbs, and then I wandered down to the pergola. I wanted to see the hellebores. Someone had told me they were flowering down there, so I headed that way, and—” She broke off and darted a glance at him. “This will sound very foolish indeed, so please bear with me, but I saw—I saw a vision of myself lying there on the ground. Quite dead.”

Gervaise set down his drink. “How very disturbing,” he said calmly. “Do go on.”

“Well, I had been in such a strange state of mind that it had not disturbed me all that much at the time. It was not until I dreamed of it that night that it really upset me. When I woke up, I was so afraid that I packed my bag and ran off to meet you at the bottom of our drive. I felt like I had a pack of devils on my heels!” She gave an embarrassed laugh. “I’m sure you must remember what a wreck I looked.”

“You were suffering the aftereffects of having been drugged, Caroline,” he corrected her. “You were still under its influence.”

She rested her head on the back of the sofa. “Yes, you did say something to that effect before, I remember,” she admitted wretchedly. “But I was in a bit of a fog. I did not really feel like I emerged properly from it until that morning I woke up in that inn and found—” She bit back her words, turning rather red.

“And found me in your bed?” he guessed, flashing her a lazy grin. “I have to say, you took it all in your stride. I was most relieved. Part of me had been fearing maidenly hysterics.”

“Had you?” She eyed him curiously.

“Yes, I did not have your true measure then. I did not realize your fortitude.”

“My fortitude,” she repeated doubtfully. “I have just regaled you with the most fantastical and lurid imaginings of my fevered mind!”

“Your mind was not to blame. It was intoxicated.”

“I suppose, but why on earth it decided to dress the body in my old dunstable bonnet and my green garden shawl is anyone’s guess! I had not even owned that bonnet since donating it the previous Christmas!”

Gervaise stubbed out his cigarette. “You were wearing it in your dream, or the corpse was wearing it,” he queried.

She winced at his use of the word corpse. “The—” She could not quite bring herself to say it. “The vision was wearing it,” she said simply. “You know what I was wearing at the time, for you saw me not long after.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, after seeing my vision, I wandered off into the wood and fell asleep under a tree. Then when I woke up and came back to the house it was much later. You had all arrived for dinner.”

“You really think that you saw this vision then?” When she opened her mouth, he interrupted her, “I mean, that you had it while awake that afternoon and not afterward.”

She looked surprised by his question. “Yes, of course.” He watched the doubt gather in her clear gray eyes. “Oh. You mean, when I woke, my brain remembered it as a false memory from the previous day, when in fact it was nothing more than a dream?”

“I think it more than likely,” he said apologetically. “Don’t you? I think your mother drugged you. Maybe that was why you dreamed of her hand hovering over your plate. Maybe you were dimly aware that she had done something out of the ordinary, though you did not realize what at the time. Maybe that is why that moment now haunts your dreams.”